Plekos 6,2004,129–136 – http://www.plekos.uni-muenchen.de/2004/rbetz.pdf 129

Hans Dieter Betz: The “Mithras Liturgy”. Text, Translation andCommentary. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck 2003 (Studien und Texte zuAntike und Christentum 18). 274 pp. Euro 69. ISBN 3-16-148128-3.

When the motif of the so called Himmelsreise der Seele was investigated at thebeginning of the twentieth century by the most important representatives of theReligionsgeschichtliche Schule, and by Wilhelm Bousset and Richard Reitzen-stein in particular, they sought the origins of this doctrine in Iranian religion.Bousset, in a well-known article published in 1901,1 inferred from eschatologi-cal Middle-Persian or Pahlavi texts that they reflected an ancient Iranian lore,which had influenced Greek culture too. Of course, the Religionsgeschichtlicheposition must in some way be shaded (e. g. in considering possible Mesopotami-an borrowings), as Carsten Colpe and, more recently, Ioan Petru Couliano haveshown.2 However, though we possess only late documents concerning Iranianeschatology, it seems very likely that ancient ecstatic or initiatory experiences,sometimes obtained by means of narcotics or hallucinogens, were further deve-loped into ritualistic practices, so that a voyage in an extraordinary dimensionor a vision of spiritual realms became a symbolic representation or a devotionalliturgy. For this reason a text like the Arda Wiraz Namag, the so called “Ira-nian Divine Comedy”, (probably written in the ninth century AD)3 cannot besimply regarded as a product from post-Sasanian times, its relative antiquityof contents being not concealed by the long development of Zoroastrian culticpractice and liturgy.

At the same time it is nevertheless true that in the second half of the firstmillennium BC the Greeks were acquainted with the initiatory and mystical-ecstatic aspects of Iranian religious doctrines, which are partly reflected, amongother sources, also in the Platonic accounts about Zoroaster or in the escha-tological section at the end of the Republic.4 This doctrine became more and

1 Die Himmelsreise der Seele, ARW 4, 1901, 136–169.

2 Carsten Colpe: Die”Himmelsreise der Seele“ ausserhalb und innerhalb der Gno-

sis, in: Le Origini dello Gnosticismo, ed. by U. Bianchi. Leiden 1967, 429–445;Die

”Himmelsreise der Seele“ als philosophie- und religionsgeschichtliche Pro-

blem, in: Festschrift fur Joesph Klein, ed. by E. Fries. Gottingen 1967, 85–104;I. P. Culianu: Psychanodia I: A Survey of the Evidence Concerning the Ascensi-on of the Soul and Its Relevance. Leiden 1983; Experiences de l’extase: Extase,ascension, et recit visionnaire de l’hellenisme au Moyen Age. Paris 1984.

3 The text has recently been edited by Ph. Gignoux: Le livre d’Arda Viraz. Paris1984, and by F. Vahman: Arda Wiraz Namag: The Iranian “Divina Commedia”.London/Malmo 1986.

4 Seminal hints can be found in J. Duchesne-Guillemin: Fire in Iran and Greece.East and West 13, 1962, 198–206; they are further developed by Gh. Gnoli:

130 Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini

more fashionable during the Hellenistic and imperial period, when manifoldsources conflated together: not to mention philosophical interpretations, likeCicero’s Dream of Scipio or Virgil’s doctrine of the immortal souls in Aeneid 6,or the Plutarchean eschatological dialogues, which were influenced by Stoicismas well as Platonism and Pythagorism, the doctrine of the heavenly ascent ofthe soul through the spheres is a central tenet in Hermetism and Gnosticismtoo. Moreover, the heavenly journey is a constant pattern of Jewish and, later,Christian apocalypses, which we cannot here discuss in further detail.5

Therefore, according to many religious traditions, such a heavenly ascentinvolves a journey into the divine realms from which the soul become initiatedinto a new, sacred status, reaping spiritual knowledge and even assimilation tothe gods.6

This is particularly evident when considering the various religious streamswhich constituted the motley universe of the imperial and late antique age. It isworth noting also the dialectic and sometimes polemic attitude shown towardsastrology, so that a strict relationship was established between the seven pla-nets and the levels that the soul had to transverse in its heavenly ascent. Forexample, according to a very influential Hermetic doctrine, during its ascent,the soul had to put off the concretions previously acquired when descendinginto the material world. Gnostic systems presented a far more complicated doc-trine, where the soul had to transverse an enormous number of archontic levels,which represented the planets, the signs, the decans, and the 360 degrees of thezodiacal circle or the 365 days of the solar year. They also developed ritual per-formances or “mysteries” intended to assure the soul an easy and safe passagethrough the spheres. The adept was supposed to learn by heart the formidablenames of the aeons and of the watchers, together with a series of mots de passe,magic numbers and seals or protective talismans corresponding to each aeon.What’s more, the techniques intended to assure the gnostic’s soul a safe passagethrough the spheres of the hostile archons up to the pleroma actually form themost important part of gnosis, if we consider, with Hans Jonas, that gnosis,insofar as it is a kind of saving knowledge, led to an Entweltlichung, that is “ashedding of one’s cosmic nature”. Furthermore, accounts of an heavenly ascent

Asavan. Contributo allo studio del Libro di Arda Viraz, in: Iranica, Napoli 1979,387–452.

5 Among the huge mass of secondary literature see I. Gruenwald: Apocalyptic andMerkavah Mysticism. Leiden 1980; M. Himmelfarb: Ascent to Heaven in Jewishand Christian Apocalypses. Oxford 1993; J. R. Davila: Descenders to the Chariot.The People behind the Hekhalot Literature. Leiden/Boston/Koln 2001.

6 For further information on this subject see my forthcoming entry “Ascension” inthe Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, ed. by L. Jones et alii.

Hans Dieter Betz: The Mithras Liturgy 131

are often recorded in the form of an apocalyptic vision, that is one of the mostproductive and meaningful literary genres of Gnostic writings.7

Bousset (to come back where we started from) argued that the belief in theascent of the soul and Gnostic dualism originated in Iran and were propagatedin late antiquity by means of the so-called mysteries of Mithra. It is well knownhow this Persian god gained an increasing favour during late antiquity and hisoriginal facies was largely reshaped to suit the changed religious attitude ofHellenism, so that Mithraism became a totally different religion if compared tothe role played by Mithra in early Zoroastrian literature.8 This view can be insome way still maintained. The second-century Platonic writer Celsus, for ex-ample, provides an important testimony, which offers a partial confirmation ofBousset’s theory. In a long fragment9 Celsus offers an extensive description of aritual object consisting of a ladder with seven steps or “gates”, which representthe planets and shares many similarities with the ones depicted in Mithraictemples. According to the philosopher, this object symbolized the passage ofthe adept’s soul through the planetary spheres and could be paralleled to a si-milar diagram ascribed to the Gnostic sect of the Ophites. Recent interpretersargued that these rituals represent a meditative technique to obtain the innerknowledge of the self and they are structured as an interior journey.

The most important example, however, is provided by a long section fromthe famous Parisian magical papyrus, edited by Preisendanz in volume oneof his Papyri Graecae Magicae (PGM VI, 475–824 [820, according to Betz’sproposal]), which is conventionally called Mithrasliturgie after the outstandingedition and commentary by Albrecht Dieterich, who recognized in this text notonly a typical product of late antique religious syncretism, but, more specifi-cally, a devotional formulary of the Mithraic mysteries. In this document it isdescribed how to gain immortality by an elevation process. In addition, thealready outlined motifs of ascension through celestial spheres, heavenly watch-ers, voces magicae, merge themselves with ritualistic and magic practice (ofapparent Egyptian origin), and therefore demonstrate how often theoretical

7 On Gnostic visions see – after G. Casadio: La visione in Marco il Mago e nellagnosi di tipo sethiano. Augustinianum 29, 1989, 123–146 – G. Quispel: Transfor-mation through Vision in Jewish Gnosticism and the Cologna Mani Codex. VCh49, 1995, 189–191 (= From Poimandres to Jacob Bohme: Gnosis, Hermetism andthe Christian Tradition, ed. by R. van den Broek, C. van Heertum, Amsterdam2001, 265–269); W. Attridge: Valentinian and Sethian Apocalyptic Tradition.JECS 8, 2000, 173–211.

8 Among the most recent studies on Mithra and Mithraism it is worth citing thevarious contributions by R. Beck and R. Gordon.

9 Apud Origenes, Contra Celsum 6, 22 ff. This long passage is extensively discus-sed by B. Witte: Das Ophitendiagramm nach Origen, Contra Celsum 6, 22–38.Altenberge 1993.

132 Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini

doctrine cannot be sharply divided form a lower level of knowledge, exampledby an often far-fetched magical praxis: it is the same opposition which features(though on a wider scale) the Hermetic writings.

Just hundred years after the first edition of Albrecht Dieterich’s Eine Mi-thrasliturgie (Leipzig, 1903; 19233), the present book offers a new complete edi-tion of so complex a text.10 It provides the Greek text, an English translation, apunctual introduction, an extensive commentary, an index of Greek words andof the various voces magicae, and, finally, also an appendix, with photographicreproductions of the papyrus. The introduction is divided into five sections,which deal respectively with the title of the work, a palaeographic descriptionof the papyrus, including the circumstance of discovery and a possible dateof composition (fourth century AD), a biographic section about Dieterich’s lifeand works,11 a general discussion of the text and of its religio-historical context.Not only Hans-Dieter Betz is one of the most gifted scholars in the domain ofprimeval Christianity and Hellenistic religions,12 but he already devoted to theMithras Liturgy a monographic essay,13 which is here enriched and largely sup-plemented. We particularly appreciated how Betz deals with the critical debatewhich spread from Dieterich’s book (in particular the criticism put forward byone of the most important scholars of Mithraism, the Belgian Franz Cumont)and how he sets Dieterich in the historical and cultural milieu of his age. Healso provides a thorough description of his career and of his conspicuous scien-tific production, which was abruptly interrupted by a premature death at theage of forty-two years in 1908. Dieterich had been a pupil and later becamethe son-in-law of the prominent Bonner philologist and historian Hermann Use-

10 Scholarship, however, paid already attention to the Mithras Liturgy from Diete-rich’s times onwards, the text being variously edited and commented (the presenteditor indeed gives a punctual discussion on the different critical perspectives).

11 Betz’s information has now to be also supplemented by these essays, which werealso published in 2003: S. Marchand: From Liberalism to Neoromanticism: Al-brecht Dieterich, Richard Reitzenstein, and the religious turn in fin-de-siecleGerman Classical Studies, in: Out of Arcadia. Classics and Politics in Germanyin the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamowitz, ed. by I. Gildenhard andM. Ruehl, London 2003, 129–160; A. Wessels: Ursprungszauber. Zur Rezeptionvon Hermann Useners Lehre von der religiosen Begriffsbildung. Berlin/New York2003, 96 ff.

12 See, for example, his manifold essays about Hellenism and early Christianity,which are collected in the four volumes of Gesammelte Aufsatze (Tubingen 1990–1998).

13 Gottesbegegnung und Menschwerdung. Zur religionsgeschichtlichen und theolo-gischen Bedeutung der Mithrasliturgie (PGM IV, 475–820), Berlin/New York2001.

Hans Dieter Betz: The Mithras Liturgy 133

ner.14 Largely influenced by Usener’s legacy, which treated as a whole both theproblems of literary and religious history, Dieterich showed his concern not onlyfor historical and linguistic comprehension of elements in marginal documentsof the Greco-Roman religion, which at a first glance seemed ‘irrational’, butalso aimed to disclose their inner strains. He thus investigated magical andastrological texts, showing also a remarkable mastery over Orphic, Hermeticand Gnostic literature, which were considered in some way the aberrant anddisturbing fringes of Greco-Roman paganism and as such neglected by classicalphilologists. In doing so he wanted to stress the importance of beliefs of po-pular origin at the periphery of official cults or of Classical paganism. At thesame time Dieterich was interested in the Hellenistic-Oriental religions and inearly Christianity: such an interest is displayed in the well-known book Nekyia(1893), which was inspired by the discovery of the apocryphal Apocalypse ofPeter and provides an in-depth study of the Greek tradition of descent to theunderworld and of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic tradition. In the Mithraslitur-gie Dieterich seems to recall these motifs, as well as those which featured hisprevious essay on magic literature, Abraxas (1891), since the text is explicitlydescribed by its anonymous author as an apathanatismos, or ritual of immor-talisation, and it provides the description of an heavenly ascent.

The final part of Betz’s learned introduction deals with ‘generic’ and compo-sitional questions (including an examination of the stylistic or literary textureand of the redaction phases, which seem to be accurate and intrinsically cohe-rent, despite the different strata of the text) and, most of all, with the globalhistorico-religious setting of the Mithras Liturgy. Dieterich’s assumption thatthis magical prescription could suit the ‘canonical’ Mithraism of the Hellenisticage is of course to be rejected – as it was almost immediately demonstratedby Cumont. Dieterich’s position can be, however, maintained in considering,as he did, the Mithras Liturgy as a prominent testimony of the syncretisticaura by which late antiquity was permeated: this includes a sort of mysticismand personal religiosity, according to the great fresco sketched out by Nock inhis book on Conversion; a deep henotheistic tendency (here exampled in thealmost coincident figure of Helios-Mithras-Aion), which features many late an-tique religious streams, and which the same Dieterich also seminally outlinedin the ‘artificial’ god Sarapis;15 as well as an intermingling of magical practice

14 There is a wide-ranging bibliography about Hermann Usener (acomplete and detailed list is provided at the following website:www.bautz.de/bbkl/u/usener h c.shtml); among recent titles it is impor-tant for the present subject the miscellaneous volume Aspetti di HermannUsener, filologo della religione. Seminario della Scuola Normale Superiore diPisa, 17–20 febbraio 1982, preface by Arnaldo Momigliano, Pisa 1982).

15 For this particular kind of henotheism it is still worth quoting A. D. Nock: Avision of Mandulis Aion, in: Essays on Religion and ancient World, ed. by Z.

134 Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini

or ritual and theoretical construction. Finally the text shows striking parallelswith magic literature and, most of all, with well known Hermetic doctrines, theEgyptian background of which nowadays no one discards any more.16 Theseparallels were already put forward by Richard Reitzenstein (in his controversialessay on the Poimandres) and are profitably recalled by Betz in the conclusivepart.

Therefore, the importance of the Mithras Liturgy for those who are inter-ested in Graeco-Roman religion of the imperial age is – I think – undeniable,just because of the combination of such multifarious motifs and themes. Muchmore, then, it appears valuable the recovery of Dieterich’s thesis, which is inser-ted in a long lignee and leads to examine thoroughly with erudition and criticalinsight a secular scholarly tradition. Dieterich’s seminal inquiries were in factvery influential in orienting the subsequent scholarship, not only the membersof the so-called Religionsgeschichtliche Schule in Gottingen, and Reitzensteinabove all, but also their ideal fellows or heirs, like Weinreich or Norden,17 and,a generation or two later, Nock or Dodds. At the same time a massive part oftheir work still remains valuable and still stands out as an exemplar model forthe present generation, which often seems to discard or forget their lesson.

Stewart, Oxford 1972, 357–400, which must be supplemented with R. van denBroek: The Sarapis Oracle in Macrobius, Sat. I 20, 16–17, in: Hommage a M.J. Vermaseren. Recueil d’etudes offert par les auteurs de la Serie Etudes Preli-minaires aux Religions Orientales dans l’Empire Romain . . . , ed. par M. B. deBoer et T. A. Edridge, Leiden 1978, 123–141. For a global consideration of lateantique ‘pagan’ monotheism see, after the much-celebrated but rather superfici-al (besides the essays by Mitchell and Liebeschuetz) miscellaneous book editedby P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede: Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Oxford1999, some contributions in the forthcoming volume Monotheisme: exclusivisme,diversite ou dialogue?, edited by Charles Guittard, which is going to collect theProceedings of the International EASR Conference held in Paris (Sept. 12th–14th2002).

16 See E. Iversen: Egyptian and Hermetic Doctrine. Copenhagen 1986 and G. Fow-den: The Egyptian Hermes. A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind.Princeton, 1986; 19932. J. Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian, Harvard 1997 inves-tigates the interesting survey of Hermetic writings and ‘Egyptian’ exoticism inEurope from the late Renaissance onwards, insofar as they represented a sort ofintellectual fashion and characterized exoteric conventicles or intellectual circles(it is possible to ascribe to the same domain a masterpiece of European music,that is Mozart’s Zauberflote, on the sources of which see S. Morenz: Die Zau-berfote. Eine Studie zum Lebenszusammenhang Agypten – Antike – Abendland.Munster/Koln 1952).

17 On Eduard Norden, his life and cultural legacy together with as a balance ofhis research see now my Per un bilancio di Agnostos Theos, which appears asintroduction to the Italian translation of Agnostos Theos, Brescia 2002, 9–122.

Hans Dieter Betz: The Mithras Liturgy 135

The main body of Betz’s book is undeniably the commentary. This is notdisplayed line to line, but offers a more general discussion of the many sectionsin which the text can be divided and which are well outlined in a recapitulativetable (pp. 60 ff.): it is therefore easier to follow and to sketch out the differentconstitutive nucleuses of the text. Not only the commentary provides a detai-led explanation of linguistic and textual questions (involving also the differentreadings of some controversial lessons or the various attempts at translatingdifficult passages), but it is especially rich and wide-ranging in discussing thehistorical and cultural context too. Such multifarious a context ranges from theEgyptian background of some magical formulas and of the practical instruc-tions displayed at the end (concerning scarabs and plants with thaumaturgicproperties) to the Greek style of the introductory prayer and invocation and thehymnic address to the god Aion in lines 587 ff. Therefore, the Mithras Liturgyrepresents one of the most interesting testimonies of the religious syncretismwhich features late antiquity. This is particularly palpable in the bulk of theritual, which displays a long series of divine or angelic figures and culminateswith a vision of grace and the immortalisation of the initiate, who had beensifted by the heavenly watchers and had to transverse the celestial spheres. Wefound of singular interest the section that displays the epiphany and providesalso an iconography of the gods Helios in lines 634 ff. and Mithra in lines 696 ff.They are both followed by a self-presentation of the initiate, usual in magicaltexts, which, again, recalls some fixed patterns of the so-called (after Norden’sAgnostos Theos) Ich-Stil, although they concern not a divine, but a humanfigure.

Due to the various influences conflating in the text, which we tried hereto sum up, a sheer drudgery was committed to the editor as far as the moreand more increasing amount of secondary literature is concerned. Nonetheless,secondary literature is lavishly quoted and each question receives exhaustivediscussion and extensive comment. However in so vast a domain it is possiblethat some bibliographic entries escaped to the author’s attention, despite therichness of information provided and the huge material collected: for example,we strangely noticed the absence of Witte’s monographic inquiry about Celsusand the diagrams of the Ophites, and likewise we regret that some importantcontributions by Italian scholars on the same subject are rather neglected (onename above all, Ugo Bianchi, with his various essays on some historico-religiousproblems involved in Mithraism, including the quest for ultramundane salva-tion).18 Finally, if I may conclude with a remark, it seems at least singular fora scientific book (written by a mother-speaking German author and printed by

18 The perspective adopted by this important Italian scholar is now investigatedand discussed by P. Pachis: Ugo Bianchi e il Mitraismo, in; G. Casadio (ed.),Ugo Bianchi. Una vita per la storia delle religioni, Roma 2002, 219–231, whoalso offers a detailed list of Bianchi’s contributions on this subject.

136 Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini

a German publisher) that all the German quotations or passages (for exampleDieterich’s ones), also in the footnotes, are translated into English, perhaps inorder to suit the Anglophone audience and the non-German speakers. It is sobitter to notice how the German language, which had been characterizing theAltertumswissenschaft for the last two centuries and formed the backbone ofclassical studies, is now rather ignored . . . .

ZusammenfassungDas Buch bietet eine neue Edition eines wichtigen Zeugnisses des spatantikenreligiosen Synkretismus. Es handelt sich um einen Auszug aus einem bedeu-tenden magischen Papyrus, namlich um die sogenannte Mithrasliturgie. Dankseiner Struktur, bestimmt durch Apokalypse und Himmelfahrt, bezieht sich derText auf das Thema der Himmelsreise der Seele, er stellt aber zugleich auch einkonkretes Beispiel eines magischen Rituals zur Erlangung der Unsterblichkeitdar. Die verschiedenen Einflusse (Hermetismus, magische Handlungen agypti-scher Herkunft, Mithraismus, henotheistische Lehren) werden durch die Einlei-tung und besonders durch den ausfuhrlichen Kommentar klar herausgearbeitet;dabei kann der Leser auch ein Bild des Religionswissenschaftlers Albrecht Die-terich und seines Werkes gewinnen; ihm wird die erste bedeutende Exegesedieses schwierigen Texts verdankt.

Chiara O. Tommasi Moreschini, Pisac.tommasi@flcl.unipi.it

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